IDE extend card anything related to OS?
 

Hello. Recently my FreeBSD keep complaining DMA ICRC error on r/w hdd
(os hangs sometimes). I tried to hang my hdd to both primary/secondary
ide controller in either slave or master mode, and the problem keeps
still. I later turned off dma in the OS thus I no longer get complains.

I think it's enough to say my IDE controllers are broken. I decide I
should by an IDE extend card (I am not sure of the device's English
name, it is a PCI card that has several IDE slot where you can plug ide
hdd/cdrom on it.)

My question: is IDE extend card related to OS? Do I have to buy an
'freebsd complaint' card, or it is not related to OS and any such device
will work?

My FreeBSD IDE controller driver said it could support many controllers,
and the manual says for unknown controllers the max speed is 16/MB
If the IDE extend card has a supported controller, I don't need anything
else to make FreeBSD use it?

Hello. Recently my FreeBSD keep complaining DMA ICRC error on r/w hdd
(os hangs sometimes). I tried to hang my hdd to both primary/secondary
ide controller in either slave or master mode, and the problem keeps
still. I later turned off dma in the OS thus I no longer get complains.

If you have another hard drive you can use, try windows on that machine and
see if the same thing occurs.
I would suspect the drive itself is the problem and not the controller
though.. although if it runs fine in PIO mode (non-dma), then it could be
something as simple as the cable is worn (and having problems at udma
speeds)..

Are you using standard 40 wire IDE cables, or 80 wire ATA cables (will
usually be blue/red on one end) ?

A google search for "freebsd"+"UDMA ICRC error" reveals a number of posts to
various freebsd forums.

My question: is IDE extend card related to OS? Do I have to buy an
'freebsd complaint' card, or it is not related to OS and any such device
will work?

Check the supported hardware list on freebsd.org for the version you're
running (e.g. 4.x, 5.x, etc).. freebsd it pretty good with support for just
about anything so you shouldn't have too many troubles..


Regards,
Chris

IDE expansion cards emulate SCSI. You will need a driver for FreeBSD. The Promise cards I am familiar with have excellent performance with hard drives but poor performance with optical drives. It would be much to your advantage to get your optical drives to work on the motherboard ports.


Zhang Weiwu wrote:

Hello. Recently my FreeBSD keep complaining DMA ICRC error on r/w hdd
(os hangs sometimes). I tried to hang my hdd to both primary/secondary
ide controller in either slave or master mode, and the problem keeps
still. I later turned off dma in the OS thus I no longer get complains.

I think it's enough to say my IDE controllers are broken. I decide I
should by an IDE extend card (I am not sure of the device's English
name, it is a PCI card that has several IDE slot where you can plug ide
hdd/cdrom on it.)

My question: is IDE extend card related to OS? Do I have to buy an
'freebsd complaint' card, or it is not related to OS and any such device
will work?

My FreeBSD IDE controller driver said it could support many controllers,
and the manual says for unknown controllers the max speed is 16/MB
If the IDE extend card has a supported controller, I don't need anything
else to make FreeBSD use it?

--

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Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

Skeleton Man wrote:
Hello. Recently my FreeBSD keep complaining DMA ICRC error on r/w hdd
(os hangs sometimes). I tried to hang my hdd to both primary/secondary
ide controller in either slave or master mode, and the problem keeps
still. I later turned off dma in the OS thus I no longer get complains.


If you have another hard drive you can use, try windows on that machine and
see if the same thing occurs.

Yesterday I tried Linux which could not even boot. Linux hangs at any
large r/w operation like lunching KDE.

I would suspect the drive itself is the problem and not the controller
though.. although if it runs fine in PIO mode (non-dma), then it could be
something as simple as the cable is worn (and having problems at udma
speeds)..

Are you using standard 40 wire IDE cables, or 80 wire ATA cables (will
usually be blue/red on one end) ?
standard 40 wires. I did a bit more test and it seems something on the
motherboard is wrong because the motherboard is taken from another box
where Linux complains "DMA Timeout". But after the other box replace
motherboard this did not happen again.

1. On my FreeBSD 4.10 the promise Ultra66 is recognized as ad5 by
default ata drive, no drive needed. However I have to manually run
/dev sh MAKEDEV ad5
in order to get root mounted from /dev/hd5

2. The BIOS and Windows (after installed drive) think the HDD is SCSI
disc but FreeBSD is smart enough to know it is IDE device. In freeBSD no
need to compile kernel with SCSI support.

3. Following advice, I did not plug CDROM onto the IDE card.

4. Seems not possible to adjust boot sequance on IDE card. It ssmes, if
I set to boot from SCSI (which is the IDE expansion card) in BIOS, it
always boot from first bootable device, from ad5 to ad8 (in FreeBSD term)

5. The extended hdd on IDE card r/w much faster in FreeBSD then in
Win2k. Not sure if it is just my feeling.